Significance of Disk Failure Prediction in Datacenters

TL;DR

This paper emphasizes the critical importance of accurate disk failure prediction models in enhancing storage reliability within modern datacenters, which contain vast numbers of drives facing increasing utilization.

Contribution

It assesses the challenges of storage system reliability and demonstrates how effective failure prediction models can significantly improve datacenter storage systems.

Findings

Disk failure prediction models can greatly enhance reliability.

Reliability challenges grow with the number of drives and utilization.

Effective prediction models are crucial for modern datacenter storage management.

Abstract

Modern datacenters assemble a very large number of disk drives under a single roof. Even if economic and technical factors where to make individual drives more reliable (which is not at all clear, given the commoditization of the technology), their sheer numbers combined with their ever increasing utilization in a well-balanced design makes achieving storage reliability a major challenge. In this paper, we assess the challenge of storage system reliability in the modern datacenter, and demonstrate how good disk failure prediction models can significantly improve the reliability of such systems.